Team Focus: Rayo Vallecano Bucking La Liga Trends

In a league season troubled by its predictability, Rayo Vallecano are La Liga’s great unknowns; the unpredictable package that bucks the trend and do so whilst playing fantastically entertaining football.

Football is often a copycat game, whatever is successful becomes “the way” to play. After Jose Mourinho’s Porto won the Champions League and Greece’s victory in the European Championships in 2004, defensive counter-attacking tactics were the rage. Thankfully for all of us that don’t use football as a cure for narcolepsy that trend didn’t last long. The current vogue – especially in Spain – is based around Barcelona and the Spanish national team’s short-passing, tiki-taka style.

Is there any league in the world now where one team isn’t described as “the Barcelona” of their locality? With 13 trophies from a possible 16 over the past three and a half years, the Barça model is something to aspire to, however there are downsides to this style being adopted across the board.

Early in the season in particular there were a raft of games in which both sides were happy to play possession football. Rather than resulting in an entertaining celebration of tiki-taka football, they just cancelled each other out and there were a high percentage of low scoring games. Through the first 11 rounds of league fixtures nearly 40% of games had finished either 0-0 (15%) or 1-0 (23%).

This is where Rayo have been so refreshingly different. The league’s minnows with the lowest budget in the league were supposed to be merely cannon fodder in La Liga, but Sunday’s 5-3 victory at Levante epitomised their season; a mad cap, high-octane goal-fest away from home.

Their goals per game ratio is the fourth highest in the league (second if you discount Real Madrid and Barcelona) at 2.91, but it is not just in the number of goals they score and concede that makes them different.

In contrast to the obsession with possession, they are the league’s biggest proponent of long balls (78 per game) and have scored 12 goals from set-piece situations – more than anyone other than dead ball specialists Athletic Bilbao, Osasuna and Levante. The ball has also only been in the middle third of the pitch 44% of the time in Rayo’s matches, the joint third lowest percentage in the league.

Most intriguingly though, they are the only side in the league to have amassed more points away from home than on their own turf. Sunday’s win was their fifth on the road and they have lost only twice on their travels outside of the routine hammerings at the Camp Nou and Bernabéu. Indeed their away record is so good that they have taken more points than even Barcelona.

There are obviously tactical reasons for this incredible run. A team that doesn’t mind surrendering the majority of possession is, in theory, better suited to play away from home where the opponent has to bring the game to them and is therefore more susceptible to the counter-attack. However, it is their attacking instincts that have again been the secret of their success.

Rayo are the league’s third highest scorers away from home (behind, you guessed it) much of which is down the trio of Michu, Lass Bangoura and new recruit Diego Costa.

Michu has been one of the standout performers of the season. His 11 goals in 22 games have made him the highest scoring midfielder in the league (although he has at times played almost as a second striker) and manager Jose Ramon Sandoval even hinted last week that he should be aiming for a place in the Spanish national squad.

Lass too has been a revelation. Often used as an out-ball due to his blistering pace on the wing, he has provided four assists and after Sunday’s brace has scored three times in just 11 starts.

However it is Costa’s contribution that has proved most vital in a three game winning run that has seen Rayo climb to within two points of a Champions League spot. The on-loan Atlético Madrid striker has scored four times in his three appearances since moving across the city, netting three with his head to underline Rayo’s propensity to play a more direct style of play.

Yet Costa and his teammates may find their natural openness a problem this weekend when Real Madrid come to visit. For all their good work on the road they were hit for six at the Bernabéu earlier in the season and with Real themselves scoring 3.4 goals a game, the goal average in Rayo’s encounters may rise again, but this time for the wrong reasons.